u/DarkOfTheSun

Hey everyone, I could really use some outside perspective to help calm my nerves for a social gathering I have tomorrow night.

I’m heading over to a friend’s house for pizza with him and my best friend. The anxiety stems from the fact that the friend hosting is married, and I had a really awkward interaction with his wife about three and a half years ago. I’ve only met her a couple of times, and I haven't seen either of them since this happened.

At the time, I was staying in a hotel with my then-girlfriend (who was abusive, and it was a very toxic relationship). We were in the middle of a massive fight right around Christmas, and to top it off, the carbon monoxide detector in our room went off. We had to wait in the lobby while they checked the room. I was incredibly burnt out, stressed to the max, and just in pure survival mode.

While I was standing there, my friend’s wife came out into the lobby (her kid, who is in a wheelchair, was rolling around). I completely froze up. I was so overwhelmed by my own situation that I just couldn't bring myself to make small talk. I basically snubbed her, though it wasn't malicious at all, my brain had just hit its absolute limit.

Now, 3.5 years later, I'm going to their house tomorrow. I am terrified that it’s going to be awkward, that she thinks I’m a terribly rude person, and that she’s been harboring resentment toward me all this time.

Am I overthinking this? Does anyone have advice on how to walk in there tomorrow, or how to handle it if the vibe is frosty? I have a brief explanation ready in my back pocket just in case she brings it up, but the anticipation is killing me. Thanks in advance!

I know a lot of Black Crowes fans don’t care for Lions. I discovered The Black Crowes in 2003 when I was fifteen, and because it was when they were broken up, I was hungry for anything they had going on when they were last active. I downloaded a bunch of videos from Kazaaa, and I would watch footage of them at the Greek Theatre from this HBO show over and over. And so the first album I heard was Lions. After eventually hearing their whole catalogue, I drifted more towards Southern Harmony being my favourite album. But because Lions was my introduction to the band, I’ve always had a soft spot for it. All of that to say, it was released 25 years ago yesterday and I’ve been thinking about a track listing that might make the album flow a bit better, and trim some of the fat. This is what I came up with:

Come On
Soul Singing
Greasy Grass River
Young Man, Old Man
Miracle To Me
Cypress Tree
Lickin’
Midnight From The Inside Out
Losing My Mind
Lay It All On Me

I’d be curious to know what your thoughts are?

I’ve had a really overwhelming few days and just need to vent, but I'd also love some perspective from anyone who has dealt with something similar.
The baseline stress started this past Saturday with a driving lesson that just didn't go well. It left me feeling pretty down and frustrated with myself. Then, today at work, everything kind of blew up, mostly by my own doing.

I’m a front-end developer, and I’ve been putting off building a specific landing page. I don't even know why I was procrastinating, but I kept pushing it off. My boss was on vacation last week, and this morning he messaged me asking for a dev link and how far along it was, mentioning that marketing was hoping to have it out yesterday.

Cue absolute panic. I hadn't even started. I had sort of fibbed in a meeting yesterday saying I was almost done, thinking I’d have all of today to do it. When he messaged me, I went into overdrive. I essentially crammed three or four days' worth of coding into three hours of hyper-focused, pure stress. I managed to get it done, reviewed, and shipped by 5:00 PM, but I was completely physically and emotionally exhausted by the end of it.
But here is the real issue: the whole time, I was on the verge of tears because I was convinced my boss was furiously angry with me.

Years ago, I had a horribly abusive boss who would scream and get angry over everything. It really messed me up. My current boss is a genuinely good guy. Looking back at his messages, he wasn't angry, he was just pushing for a deadline and trying to find a solution (even offering to have other teammates help me). He has never been angry with me, he just focuses on problem-solving.

Yet, my brain completely defaulted to that old trauma. I was convinced I was in huge trouble and he was furious, even though logically I know he isn't that kind of person.

I’ve calmed down a lot now after taking a step back (and finally taking a shower!), but it's exhausting to realize how much of this old anxiety I'm still carrying around.

Has anyone else dealt with this kind of residual work trauma? How do you train your brain to recognize that a stressful moment with a good boss isn't the same as an attack from an abusive one? And how do you stop that cycle of anxiety-induced procrastination? Any advice is appreciated.

My (38m) and my fiancée (33F) are in the final stages of planning our wedding. We were going over what we wanted to do for the reception last night and she mentioned that I need to pick a song for the mother/son dance. She’s already picked out her song for the father/daughter dance.

I told that I didn’t want to do a mother son dance. I’m pretty introverted and really don’t like a lot of attention on me. And I know my mom, and she’s the same way. Really doesn’t like being the centre of attention. Even getting up in front of all my friends and family to get married is giving me a lot of anxiety. But I love my fiancée so I’m focusing on her when it comes time for the ceremony and hoping that will ease my nerves and get me through it.

Last night though, she get angry at me because I didn’t want to do the mother/son dance. She said that this is just part of the wedding and that it’s a fairly standard thing for the people getting married to have a dance with their parent.

We stayed up quite late last night going back and forth. I’m still holding firm that this is really something I don’t want to do, and something I’m pretty sure my mom won’t want to do either.

Am I being the asshole though, because this is something that most weddings have?

Edit: Everyone is saying I should ask my mom first. My mom has told both me and my fiancée several times that she has no expectations for the wedding, and that whatever we want to do she fully supports us.

It’s coming up on a year-and-a-half since I broke up with my ex. To be honest I don’t know if she actually had BPD, as she was never formally diagnosed. Long story, but she was dismissive of the label. I know she said something about it once but I can’t remember the details in what she said. This was long before I really knew anything about it. Anyway, she was formally diagnosed with PTSD, and CPTSD. But the intense fear of abandonment indicates more likely that it’s BPD the more I learn about it. She used to call me every day after work and over analyze her day and whether or not she was going to get fired.

Anyway, the details aren’t that important. The splitting, the black and white thinking, me being her favourite person, it was all there. The moment I had an inclining that the relationship was likely not going to last was when my mom sent me a text to let me know that my grandfather was in the hospital, and I let my ex know what was happening and her first reaction was to be upset that my family didn’t text her too, and that they were mad at her. Instead being a source of support for me, whose Grandfather who I was very close might not make it and may never see him again (he lived another two years and passed this January).

Finally on December 1st, 2024 I had reached my breaking point. We were having a fight on the phone. And I just blurted out “I can’t do this anymore”. I had thought about leaving for months and months, and there it was. I said it. It took another month of taking a few weeks and her begging me to take her back before she finally realized I wasn’t going back to the relationship.

She still had some stuff at my place, and she kept putting off coming to get it. Exactly a year ago today, April 28 2025, she reached out by text to thank me for being patient and that she had been busy. And asked if she could “reach out in the coming weeks”. That was the last I ever heard of her.

Finally around Christmas I blocked her on everything. It felt good knowing that whenever my phone rang or dinged with a text that it wasn’t going to be her and I wouldn’t have that little jolt of anxiety.

I realized this past Sunday that I had gone well into the afternoon without thinking about her. But then the last two days, YouTube’s algorithm decided to show me clips that of that show Coupled Therapy, and it’s brought me right back to thinking about our dynamic.

I feel like I still have a crush on her but in a negative way. Like I still have this resentment and anger toward her for all the abuse that I was aware of, and the more I learn about BPD what was abuse in hindsight. I’m glad that I have this framework now to look out for the early red flags, but I just can’t stop thinking about her, and how she hurt me, and how angry I am at her. I just want it to stop. I want to just let go of it, but I can’t for some reason.